by Andrew Potok
“Angel, where did you find that marvelous book? Do me a favor. On your way this afternoon, stop by Lewis’s on Gower Street and pick up a dozen copies for me.” When I arrived, she had my copy in her hand.
“Do you know,” she said, vibrant and manic as I had not seen her since Beckenham, “this man Illich used to be a friend of mine.”
“He was?” I asked, not believing it for one moment.
“He was a priest, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I gulped. It still seemed unlikely.
“I knew him in Czechoslovakia. Or was it Hungary? He and I and Cardinal Mindszenty knew each other well,” she said with a lot of animation. “People called us the Three Musketeers.”
My eyes must have registered the astonishment I felt. “You don’t believe me?” she asked. “Well, let me tell you that I never lie. I don’t need to lie.” She looked at the book again. “What do you know about Illich?” she went on. I told her what I knew, how I had admired him for his war on institutions and how taken I could be, especially at my most romantic, with his preaching of a return to pre-industrial society.
“Do me another favor, cherub,” she said. “Write Illich a letter for me and ask him if he would visit me in England. I’ll pay his way, of course.”
Illich had a profound effect on both of us. I strained to see the text through my Coke-bottle lenses, while Helga was now often on the phone when I arrived, telling Ida Moore of the Observer or Mrs. Heathcroft about the amazing new book. With me, she periodically brought up various aspects of the book for discussion.
“You know that Allende?” she asked me one day.
Illich mentions Dr. Salvador Allende’s resistance to the importation of American drugs and the opposition of the majority of Chilean doctors to his intended limiting of the national pharmacopeia to a few dozen items.
“They killed that wonderful Allende,” she rasped, thirsting for revenge. “They killed him for his stand against drugs.”
I think she would have happily martyred herself for the same cause. She was being radicalized by Illich; in him, her lifelong rage against the medical establishment found strong compelling support. In the final analysis, it was very much Helga’s book, because its solutions to an overmedicalized society lay in a return to simplicity where presumably every quack could ply his or her trade as long as the enterprise stayed small. I too found an instant comrade in Illich, who buoyed up my growing outrage with the impotence of medicine.
I hired a reader to find the books listed in Illich’s copious footnotes, too small for me to see, even letter by letter. This book aroused both Helga and me out of a summer lethargy. Illich was arming me with ammunition I felt I would need to defend myself upon my return to the States. I would be so deft with deeply relevant statistics and so abundantly imbued with revealing quotes about the horrors of their medicine that my skeptical friends who had not understood how I managed to last so long with Helga, especially after Sarah’s debacle, would be rendered speechless and ineffectual by my lithe and tricky salvos.
It also offered me an area of study that for the first time in a long time engaged me passionately.
My friend Bronka became very ill that summer and was taken to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, which Sta called the “Hampstead Hilton.” She had complained of severe side pains, which were diagnosed as kidney stones. When she showed no improvement on the medication prescribed, they rediagnosed her worsening condition as a pulmonary embolism and put her on anticoagulants, which, according to Illich, caused more harm than good. She lay there more afraid than sick as doctor after doctor visited, offering sketchy, sometimes contradictory opinions. When the superstar, the consultant, came through on rounds with a comet’s tail of students following behind, they disregarded Bronka completely as they palpated, drew blood, turned her from side to side like meat. I visited her daily to commiserate and to watch Illich’s “clinical iatrogenesis,” doctor-induced illness, in action.
Bronka slowly recovered, in spite of the care. At the end of a week, the only medication they insisted she continue taking was a pain killer and a barbiturate, neither of which she felt she needed, as she had no pain and slept well. She survived just as I was surviving, both of us strong enough to withstand the ministrations of healers.
Bronka looked rosy during her illness. Adversity sharpened her spirit, flushed her cheeks. Morbidity has a special energy and sensuality, as any romantic will attest, and I was beginning to suspect that even retinitis pigmentosa, whose morbidity was confined to a dime-sized, paper-thin tissue behind the eyeball, offered a unique opportunity for heightened perception.
I began to think of myself as a standard-bearer for differentness. I again took some interest in the immediacy of my condition and even used my cane in public on occasion. I made contact with the newly formed British RP Society and got together with people who needed to talk about their damaged lives—just as I had done before coming to London. One weekend, I went with Vera, once again intrigued with my eyes, to have a look at the Royal Institute’s Rehabilitation Center for the Blind, which was much like St. Paul’s.
I spent weekends with friends in Kent or Surrey or Sus-sex. But every moment I was alone, I tried to write. I told Helga about my writing, and much to my surprise, she seemed stunned, even affronted. She demanded to know what had changed to dissuade me from my desire to paint again. “This is just in case, Mrs. Barnes,” I told her. Vera too kept urging me to think about painting. They both kept that dream alive.
The struggle with words seemed at times like a full-scale war. Learning to be skilled at blindness or at counseling was like a mock skirmish, compared with trying to push words around. Words felt as heavy as lead, hard as rock, unmovable, and incapable of nuance or ambiguity. As I laboriously rammed them into place, like the massive blocks of the pyramids, I longed for the playfulness of paint.
Before I left England I wanted to have in my possession some empirical evidence of documented success or a consensus of failure. All the while, I had been going about collecting names of patients and keeping track of what they said about their improvement or lack of it. Now I would have been grateful for hospital records or an ophthalmologist’s affidavit, but hard evidence in soft enterprises tends to disappear, and I couldn’t get my hands on a single piece of it.
Tom Larkin was nowhere to be found. I got Dirkson on the phone.
“Look here,” he said. “I’m not really sure if Mrs. Barnes helped. . . .”
“What?” I said. “Why are you saying that now? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I might have been improved. I was never really sure. I’m not sure now,” he said.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. “What about your diagnosis? Are you sure about that?”
“Yes,” he said. “They should have that at St. George’s or Moorfields. . . .”
“I called Moorfields to ask, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Would you try to get some facts together for me? Other people have a right to know if you were helped, if you really have RP, anything. . . .”
“Yes, I know,” he said without much enthusiasm. “I’ll try but I can’t promise. . . .”
“Jesus Christ,” I yelled. “Why can’t you help, Dirkson?”
“You see,” he said, “even if Mrs. Barnes hasn’t helped me much, it doesn’t mean she can’t. She still has the power to do so, I believe. I have children who might turn out to have retinitis pigmentosa. If they do, I certainly don’t want to be on the wrong side of Mrs. Barnes.”
All the other London patients whom I had met continued to furnish me with ambiguous reports. Mrs. Dorset’s boys were no proof one way or the other. They had been pronounced cured, just like Sarah, but they were still too young to notice any serious deterioration. Jorge Salomon continued to talk of his expanding cashews, but he too had nothing substantial to report. I called James McDole in Scotland. He had not been in London during my six months, but we had talked before on the phone.
“I think you are do
ing the right thing in trying to find out more about all this. I wish I could help you, but the only thing I can truthfully say is that she has changed my life. I really was nearly blind before the bee treatment and I am now carrying on my normal life.”
“Are you sure it was the bees?”
“The only thing I can say is that it happened during the bees and it has remained for a year and a half.”
“Are you sure you have, or had, retinitis pigmentosa?”
“I’m sure because an ophthalmologist in Edinburgh told me so some twenty years ago.”
“Could we get the records of your visit?” I asked.
“Well, I’m afraid not,” he said. “The ophthalmologist died.”
I was as perplexed as ever. I berated myself for not getting on the Edinburgh train to see McDole in person, for not hounding them at Moorfields for corroboration of Dirkson’s diagnosis and present condition. But I was losing interest.
On my next to last day in London, I called Mrs. Heathcroft, whom, I supposed, I had been afraid to call before. She was an imposing figure, if only by reputation. Her picture had appeared in the Observer article. In it, her head was draped with polyethylene bags stuffed with herbs, to cure her asthma. She looked horrible, like a bloated Medusa or Lady Macbeth very near the end. In making photocopies of the articles, I was glad that the illustrations were almost indecipherable.
“Mrs. Heathcroft,” I said on the phone, “we met briefly once outside Mrs. Barnes’s place in Sidcup. I have been her patient for the last six months, and now that I am returning to the United States, I hoped that perhaps we could talk—”
“Does Mrs. Barnes know you are calling?” she interrupted.
“She’s the one who gave me your telephone number,” I explained.
“Does she know you’re calling me now?” she asked in a very businesslike fashion.
“Right now? No, I guess not—” and I heard a click on the line, disconnecting us. I dialed again. It rang for a long time before Mrs. Heathcroft picked up the phone. “Ah, Mrs. Heathcroft,” I said. “I believe we were disconnected. . . .”
“No, we were not,” she informed me. “I will not talk to anyone about Mrs. Barnes or about my family’s health without Mrs. Barnes’s permission.” And the phone slammed down once again.
Late that afternoon, as Sta, Edith, Bronka, and I were racing around the apartment packing all my belongings, Helga called. “Listen, cherub,” she said. “The Blind Commission in Norway just asked if they could send me a slew of RP patients from Bergen. Can you imagine? Isn’t it wonderful that I decided not to go to Abu Dhabi?” I put my hand over the receiver to direct Sta, who was holding up an African necklace I had bought for Charlotte.
“Beautiful,” he said, “but tell me please, Andy, what are these things?”
“Ostrich shells and malachite and old gin bottles,” I said.
“Beautiful,” he repeated. I listened to Helga again.
“Anyway,” she was saying, “I want you to write me once a week. You know that sometimes it takes months, maybe a year and a half, before a permanent cure happens. With you, it was difficult, but I assure you that it will happen. We probably pumped too much poison into you. So rest up, cherub, rest for six months and then come back to me. I won’t charge you another penny.”
“Fine, Mrs. Barnes,” I said.
“And as for your daughter, these young girls are all alike. Tell her to get plenty of sleep and reserve next summer for me.”
“You know, I called Mrs. Heathcroft today and she wouldn’t talk with me. Do you know why?”
“She is a wonderful woman,” Helga said. “If I can trust anyone at all, I can trust her. Do you know what I did for that whole family?” she asked. “Well, old Heathcroft was completely blind. . . .”
I had imagined that taking leave of Helga would be different. I had imagined a final gala banquet—why not at the Grosvenor?—that everyone close to me would attend. The table would be very long and elegantly set. Helga at one end, me at the other. The Amadeus Quartet would play Mozart. Flanking me would be my children, Charlotte, and Vera, all delighted to have taken part in this drama, this allegory; my mother wearing the necklace of pearl strands her brother had given her; my London family, all of whom I had finally met; and the people who were buying the movie rights, the serial rights to my story, my new art dealer, representatives of the Tate and the Modern. . . .
Helga went on and on, prattling, mimicking, scolding. If ever I entertained hopes that behind this dreary, predictable banality lurked a wise Zen master, I was wrong. Behind the threats and cockiness, the promises and braggadocio, there was nothing.
She called again late that night. Sta’s flat was full of people saying good-bye. “Ah, it is the most wonderful thing in the whole world to be able to cure blindness” was the last thing she said.
FIFTEEN
Dear Mrs. Barnes,
I haven’t written to you before because there was nothing to say. I’ve been back home a few weeks and have to report that there is no change in my vision or Sarah’s. It’s sad that after all this time, nothing has happened. Should the situation change, I’ll let you know. I hope that other patients have better news than I.
My regards,
Andrew Potok
I wasn’t particularly surprised not to hear from her again. I imagined that she read the letter, cursed it soundly, and tore it to shreds, muttering “that ungrateful dog,” and meaning every word of it.
I now wanted to seek a new life, no longer concerned with eyes or cures, but a life in the making, built on the remnants of old wrecks and aborted starts, though free of remorse. But in London I had sat on too much anger, constrained by foreign soil, by Helga’s demands for good behavior, by Sta’s generosity and my own manners. In Plainfield, I felt ready to burst. I had been desperate when I left and I felt totally defeated on my return.
Sarah was back at the university, an hour away; Mark was starting his third year at Chicago. Jed and Maya still lived at home and attended the district high school, where he was involved in basketball, and she in her burgeoning social life.
Charlotte’s work was on the verge of recognition—the Museum of Modern Art in New York was interested in it— and she locked herself in her studio daily, mucking about in clay and plaster. I tried to squelch my envy, but each time I grumbled about something, the only reasonable cause seemed to be my festering jealousy. Within a few weeks, the museum announced that they were accepting ten of Charlotte’s porcelain pieces into their permanent design collection. We went to celebrate at Tubbs, our local roadside inn.
“Hey, Charlotte,” Neil said from behind the bar. “That’s great news. First round is on the house. And how’re you doing, Andy?”
“Fine. Nice to see you, Neil,” I said. I had to stop saying “Nice to see you.” It was embarrassing. I hadn’t seen him in years, not since he’d taken up that shadowy position behind the bar. I liked Neil. He was one of the few people in the community who always identified himself when speaking to me.
We sat at the table near the fireplace where a small fire hissed. Over old Dave Brubeck records, I heard the bustle of the early evening crowd: my friends, the pretty waitress, a few Goddard College teachers grumbling about self-assessment and competency near the door to the terrace. A group of jovial social workers from Montpelier shared a table, talking of diets and Title XX grants, having one drink only and a couple of pretzels. I, on the other hand, was home from Helga’s wars, my ears still ringing from battle, my nerves jangled by the raw confrontations. Everything here seemed paltry and superficial.
“What happened to him? Can he see?” I overheard George from the Texaco station ask at the bar. I’d never been sure whether or not George knew about my blindness, so I always felt uncomfortable around him. As I sat in the passenger seat of the car while he pumped gas, or, on below-zero mornings, as I fumbled with the other end of the jumper cables while George, standing by his tow truck, watched, I wanted to tell him but never did.<
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“Everybody’s asking me what happened in London,” my youngest daughter Maya said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing happened,” I snapped. “Say that.”
“Come on, Papa, why so crabby?” Sarah said. “You’re back, Charlotte’s famous, we’re all together. . . .”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know. . . .”
“I was scared when you left,” Maya said, almost inaudibly.
“Scared? Why scared?”
“I guess because you were going away. Jed was scared too. I thought you’d see again. It was magic, and magic is scary.”
“You know, don’t you, that I didn’t really want magic? I wanted a new kind of medicine.”
“I’m just glad it’s all over,” Maya said. Jed squirmed a little and said, “Me too.”
“Well, Maya, we tried,” Sarah said. “We didn’t find much, but at least we looked.”
I could have easily forgotten that it was Charlotte’s evening. I ordered another Scotch to help me remember, to get me out of myself.
“I want to feel good,” Charlotte said. “Things are beginning to happen to me, but I can’t feel good with you like this.”
“Don’t feel bad,” I said weakly. “I’ll get over it.” It was one of those frightening moments, repulsive and seductive, when I wanted to say: “No more! I give up.” My misery was like a caul around me, choking me, protecting me. Others’ good fortune isolated me; their bad fortune underscored mine. I was regressing, out of control, and I hated to admit the reasons why. I didn’t know how I could get through this time.
“You didn’t fail,” Charlotte was saying. “That goddamn crazy woman failed.”
“After six months I’m back to where I started,” I said. In fact, I was moving years back, way back.
Liz came over from the jovial table, Barry from the Goddard one. They congratulated Charlotte and put their hands on my shoulders, giving me little significant squeezes. “Our own Charlotte,” Liz said.